A growing number of consumers now have high speed, or broadband, connections to the Internet in their homes. Generally, a consumer receives an Internet access service through this broadband connection, which allows one or more personal computers to access the Worldwide Web and other Internet resources. In addition to this data service, the increased bandwidth provided by a broadband connection allows providers to deliver other media services, such as telephone, digital television, and/or video, to a multimedia terminal adapter (MTA) or a digital home communication terminal (DHCT) located in the home.
These data and media services share the bandwidth of the subscriber's broadband connection. In the case of broadband video or music services, individual programs received by a subscriber are made of a collection of media streams that combine into a single user experience. For example, a video program includes video and audio streams, and can also include one or more data streams. Each of these programs uses a certain amount of bandwidth, where this bandwidth is proportional to the picture quality. Thus, a specific amount of bandwidth is required to support, for example, a broadband video service carrying one High Definition (HD) program and two Standard Definition (SD) programs. Furthermore, this bandwidth requirement can be viewed as three different requirements, for instantaneous demand, average demand, and maximum demand.
Generally, some subscriber broadband connections support more bandwidth than others. Often, available subscriber bandwidth depends on loop length (the distance between the subscriber location and the service provider's transmission equipment). Thus, the amount of video programming which can be delivered to subscribers depends on the characteristics of the subscriber connection. However, provider networks are conventionally built so that every subscriber connection supports a guaranteed minimum bandwidth, and then the provider delivers content which is limited to this minimum. Thus, a subscriber with a connection that could receive 30 Mbits is limited by the subscriber that can only receive 25 Mb/s. Therefore, a need arises to address this and other deficiencies.